Ethan Koh is possibly London’s most unlikely fashion student ever to be stressing over his final dissertation at the London College of Fashion. He’s the dapper Singaporean boy who can be spotted—and often is—walking to school across Mayfair with his books on the economics of luxury poking out of a matte charcoal gray holdall which he designed from the high-grade hides of three Louisiana alligators.

It’s these bags that are turning the heads of women who can spot a top-grade exotic (like Nile croc) from a natty alligator skin at 50 paces. “One day I was walking past the Connaught hotel carrying my turquoise crocodile tote, and a lady stopped and asked me ‘Where did you get that?’ ” Koh recalls with grin. “I told her I make them. So she invited me over to look in her wardrobe, and I made her something to match her clothes. I didn’t realize she was royal until much later.”

Koh’s precocious ability to design, make, and automatically attract the clientele for his super-luxurious Ethan K bags—a bespoke business he began when he was 22—springs from the fact that he’s been training since he was practically a baby. He’s the fourth-generation son of the Heng Long International family in Singapore, highly specialized precious skin tanners, who supply alligator, crocodile, and other exotic skins to Hermès and Prada. “I was working on the selection team grading skins as a teenager when the artisans came in from Prada,” Koh said. “It’s just like grading diamonds. No two crocs are alike, and you have to match them, so really the art of purchasing is for a connoisseur.”

After managing to getting a stint at Hermès in Paris under his belt (in order to observe how bags are made and sold) he came to London to study. “Then I borrowed £3000 from my dad and decided to try to launch my own small line, buying from him at the same rate as anyone else, after finding a factory in Italy to hand-make them.”

Word about what this young, amusing boy does has spread amongst the cognoscenti, lunch by lunch, clutch by clutch. Now Koh says he’s managing orders for 30 bags at a time, for which his clients pay £6000 each, and half of it up front. If that sounds stratospheric on an ordinary mortal income, well, yes it is. But Koh is already flying at a level where the women he academically describes as “High Net Worth Individuals” who know their Birkins from their Bottegas in intimate detail. So what are they seeking from young Ethan K? “Oh, my clients are trend-setters,” he said “ They want turquoise, green, and purple—all the fashion colors! It’s like going into a candy shop for them. And it’s good that I am able to advise them there, on the spot, with their clothes. What I am, I think, is a bag couturier!”

How do you say hello where you’re from? Heisann! How were you discovered? I met model agent Donna Ioanna while on a casting in Bergen. Most memorable modeling moment: The Calvin Klein Fall 2011 show. I LOVED it! Most embarrassing modeling moment: It’s a secret I will not tell! Too embarrassing! Favorite Model: Gisele Bündchen. What are you wearing? A vintage jacket, a Zara blouse, H&M jeans, and vintage shoes.

Favorite color: Blue. Favorite food: Chinese chicken with almonds. What do you do for exercise? Running, playing soccer! What is in your purse right now? My wallet, my lip gloss, my book, my BlackBerry, and a map of New York City. Beauty item you cannot live without: Eyelash curler. Last song listened to on iPod: Stella Mwangi’s “Haba Haba.” Name one thing people would be surprised to know about you? I LOVE soccer! What item are you coveting? Apple MacBook Air. Favorite blog: cathinthecity.com. Name something you are looking forward to in the next 24 hours: Having Chinese food with model Madelene de la Motte.

Who is your hero? My mom! Dream Vacation: A hidden beach or skiing in the French Alps. Favorite destination you have been to so far: Miami, and of course, New York. Place you always visit while in New York: Starbucks.

This spring there are a lot of unconventional ways to dress up a look for after-hours. Our second post in a new three-part series, dubbed New Ways to Glamorize Your Spring Wardrobe, explores the skirts-over-pants trend seen on the fall 2011 runways.A fresh fix for perhaps the most classic fashion conundrum—how to glamorize a day look for evening—is the skirt-over-pant trend, a runway revelation that started with the seemingly relaxed yet stunningly embellished pieces that drew tears (yes, tears) from the audience at Chanel Haute Couture and continued with the more casual versions Haider Ackermann and Balenciaga’s Nicolas Ghesquière designed for fall. It’s a younger, easier approach to black tie, and an invitation for the Art Production Fund’s spring benefit promised the perfect party to debut this layered look.

Who better to opine on a novel ensemble than New York’s coolest art aficionados? In an effort to dress and dash, I threw a stone-studded lace H-line skirt from Dolce & Gabbana over the pair of simple Céline trousers I’d worn to work that day.

“I’ve done that before!” Amanda Brooks said approvingly. After a quick discussion of proportions and aesthetics, she decided a skinnier pant was better suited for my outfit—the Céline bottoms looked too wide. I closed the zippers at my ankles (thank you, Phoebe!), which seemed to do the trick.

“When I started off in the nineties, we used to wear this look with sneakers,” Teen Vogue Editor-in-Chief Amy AstleyWaris Ahluwalia asked whether my layers felt fussy. “I believe it was the French writer Stendhal who said, ‘Only great minds can afford a simple style,’ ” he offered.

My reply? Stendhal was right, and going straight from the office to a lovely affair on a Monday night, nothing felt simpler than dressing up my day outfit with a dazzling extra touch. said. But unlike the layers that flowed through nineties grunge, this after-hours look is structured: a disciplined chic that redefines comfortable eveningwear. It was ideal for a cooler April night, and even with a simple gray sweater on top and basic Miu Miu pumps, I felt polished head-to-toe, ready to continue to an intimate after-dinner tea at the Bowery Hotel with friends. Later, the sartorial-minded

Our third post in a new three-part series, dubbed New Ways to Glamorize Your Spring Wardrobe, explores evening shoes for day.“The notion that a shoe intended for evening can’t be worn during the day is absurd. It depends on how you style it! Even rhinestones, satin, and velvet can be paired with a simple shirt, or jeans. You have to have the guts to wear what you want!” says Paola Bay, designer for Zoraide shoes, who is a leading proponent of day-for-night footwear—by which we mean the stylish propensity to go about one’s daily routine shod in towering pumps and peeptoes formerly relegated to evening soirees.This delicious development first reared its lovely head during the fall collections, when women like Giovanni Battaglia could be spotted sporting insanely delicate shoes in broad daylight. It’s a phenomenon that hasn’t been seen since the 1990s, when legendary dressers like Isabella Blow were famous for arriving at work in the early morning (well, maybe not that early) in paste-buckled brocade slippers.

In the intervening decades, we’ve been strapping ourselves into chunky, clunky gladiators and teetering on spiked platforms meant to evoke a rough-and-ready, almost sadomasochistic sexiness. With years of that behind us, is it is any wonder women are ready to try a little tenderness, at least where their feet are concerned?

Bay, for one, has recently been spotted trotting around Milan, her hometown, wearing rhinestone-encrusted pink velvet heels paired with dungarees, a decision, she admits, calculated “to drive the old-fashioned Milanese nuts! Some people still feel they have to match,” Bay observes with the faintest snort of ladylike derision. “But if you wear evening shoes during the day, you feel elegant, even more confident! You have a different body language.” Bay argues that younger women, born in the 1980s and ’90s, grew up without any of the hidebound rules regarding how to dress that hemmed in their mothers, and they are the early adopters of the evening-shoes-for-day trend. “In the old days you only got to wear these shoes five or six times a year. Now young women want to wear them all the time.”

Her feelings are more than seconded by Charlotte Olympia Dellal, another shoe designer who practices what she preaches. “Ever since I started making shoes, that’s been my aesthetic. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to design shoes in the first place!” Dellal says, adding that her creations are meant to evoke a bygone era, “when things were more fun. People dressed with a bit more character back then—there were more excesses in hats, shoes, and bags.” Dellal thinks that the increasing availability of shoes in brilliant colors and prints, at both designer and high street levels, is fueling the movement. “When I was growing up, all you could get was black, and maybe red—that was the idea of a crazy color,” she remembers with a slight shudder. “Now that there’s so much choice, it’s easier to experiment. People can really show their personality. When you look down, I think fun shoes are a nice surprise.”

Tabitha Simmons, whose eponymous line offers such extravagances as the Dixie shoe—a gray glitter toe–python body hybrid with a super-high chunky heel she avidly argues is meant for both 11:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m.—frequently dresses from the ground up. “I start at the feet and take it from there,” she explains—which, in her case, can mean beginning with sequined platforms and terminating abruptly in ripped jeans and a tee. “People buy shoes as an investment,” she sums up, “and they are going to wear them whenever they want to!”